33LIMA

Beating up the enemy after dark, in Prangster's Mosquito campaign for IL-2! To adapt the 'Redneck's' line in the movie 'Outpost', you can say what you like about Hermann Goering, but he had style...and a perhaps characteristically brutal but effective way with words. Of all the pithy statements attributed to 'der Dicke', as the rotund Reichsmarschall was unceremoniously nicknamed, one I like best concerns his opinion of the 'Wooden Wonder' - the justly-famous DeHavilland DH98 Mosquito. Of this superlative aeroplane, Goering is said to have remarked: 'In 1940 I could at least fly as far as Glasgow in most of my aircraft, but not now! It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy. The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that? There is nothing the British do not have. They have the geniuses and we have the nincompoops. After the war is over I'm going to buy a British radio set - then at least I'll own something that has always worked.' It's said (eg in Crowood's Me262 history) that - far from having been forced into development as a bomber by Hitlerian ineptitude - the famous German jet fighter was heavily marketed by Willy Messerschmitt as a multi-role plane from the outset. And that this was partly in an effort to cash in on widespread German recognition of the Mosquito's success as a very fast warplane which excelled at many roles: fighter, night bomber, precision day bomber, fighter bomber, night fighter, anti-shipping, reconnaisance. Whatever Messerschmitt's motivation, the Mosquito is one of those aircraft which, as the saying goes, looked right and was right. It also sounds pretty good: A little while back, my plan to feature comparative Mosquito mission reports in a few different sims didn't get beyond CFS2 add-on 'Mosquito Squadron' when my graphics card failed. Restored by heating it to re-flow possible failed soldered connections, I can pick that up now. So it's time for 'Mosquito Squadron' again; this time not the CFS2 add-on but Prangster's mini-campaign of that name, available for IL-2 over at that peerless resource for all things Sturmovik, Mission4Today: http://www.mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads&file=details&id=1172 I was especially interested in flying the included Amiens Prison raid in IL-2, by way of comparison with the CFS2 equivalent. But that will come later. This report is on the first mission in Prangster's campaign. Intriguingly, this is for a night intruder mission, which I knew Mossies flew in 1944 around the time of the Normandy landings. Some of these operations are described by participants, in Osprey/del Prado's 'Mosquitos of World War 2', a good basic source. One of the units flying these missions in 1944 was the Royal New Zealand Air Force's 487 Squadron, squadron code 'EG', assigned to the RAF's 140 Wing, No. 2 Group, in the famous Second Tactical Air Force (2nd TAF). And this is the very squadron featured in this campaign! Go, Kiwis! Night intruder missions were a new departure for me. I knew they had earlier been flown by black-painted Hurricanes and Bostons, stooging around in the dark, low over enemy-occupied France and basically shooting up anything that looked like it needed shooting up. Now, I was going to attempt this in a Mosquito...a virtual one of course but the darkness would be real enough. So with the room light turned off and illumination provided from a light outside filtering through a partly-open door - the better to be able to make out detail on a dark screen yet see a little of my keyboard - I braced myself for a new simualtion experience. Here's the mission brief. I have to say that it is short but exceptionally good. Mission objectives and important parameters are clearly stated and appended to this is some immersive, realistic extra, military-looking stuff, starting with a met report from the meterolo...meteriolo...you know, those weathermen chappies. From what I remember, this is the original IL-2 Normandy 'map', which I think came with the Aces Expansion Pack or thereabouts. No South of England provided. So I'm taking off from a small island where no land should be, out in the English Channel and quite close to the French coast. But I for one much prefer this to an air start. And the island is a reasonable substitute for Thorney Island on the southern coast of England further north, at which Mossies were really based at this time. Though it's February 1944 and D-Day is still four months away, knowing what's coming I can read off from the map and savour all those names about to become famous on The Longest Day...Pointe du Hoc, Ouistreham, Courselles-sur-Mer and all the rest. In short, on this sortie I must fly west at low level and orbit at the enemy airfield near Valognes, knocking down any Gerries silly or unfortunate enough to be caught in the circuit there. Then I fly south for a bit, clobbering all and sundry ground transport as I go. If I can see any. It being dark, this doesn't seem very likely. How on earth will I manage? I have no idea. But there's one way to find out... I started the mission. Here I am in the cockpit...and in the dark. At least it's a moonlit night. When you're out and about in the countryside, away from the city lights and relying on just the Mark 1 Eyeball suitably dark-adapted, you appreciate the massive difference between visibility on a moonlit night, compared to a truly dark, overcast one. This was bad, but it wasn't impossible. At least I could see my immediate surroundings and most important of all, a horizon. So I had at least a sporting chance of getting airborne...and maybe even staying there. So far, so good. Switching to the external view, I had a look around. Against the lighter sky to the west, I could at least see my own aircraft, on its own as this is a solo mission. Our little island base seemed quite well-appointed and the flarepath was nicely illuminated for my takeoff. Feeling a little less uncomfortable, I called up the 'mini-map' and oriented myself. Sad to say, I completely forgot about using my own cockpit, navigation or landing lights. Not enough training in night flying, was my excuse. What are they thinking, throwing people like me to the lions, on operations like this, that we're completely untrained for? Feeling still slightly peeved, I started humming to myself that old airman's refrain...all together, now: 'I didn't want to join the Air Force I didn't want my b*****ks shot away I'd rather hang around Piccadilly Underground Living off the earnings of a high-born lady.' Not much hope of that now...maybe later, if I make it back and that transfer to a training unit comes through. Oh well, nothing else for it, but back to the night's business. I started up, checked my controls, set flaps two notches down and opened the throttle. Very slowly. This seemed to have the desired effect in minimising swing. Keeping well between the rows of lights either side of the long runway, I lifted off and climbed away. Early days yet but so far, still so good. Maybe I'd do alright at this night intruder lark, after all. ...to be continued!

Do tell Craig, where did you get the stuff for Toko-Ri? Haven't come across much for Korea in IL-2,. Not that I've been looking hard, but having always loved the movie (flying and carrier sequences anyway; did they REALLY belly-land that Panther? It certainly didn't look like a model) I would quite like to have a shot at dropping that bridge and/or clobbering the triple-A.

IIRC the weaving about used to be worse, but a patch to FE(1) adopted a user fix which reduced it. I often 'warp' (Alt+N, 'next encounter) to save time on longer patrols and they seem to be settled when you come out, but start weaving again after course changes. Haven't tried Quack's mod. I just put up with the weaving, not least as the formation-keeping in FE/FE2 is still better than in RoF and much, much better than WOFF. Sorry I forgot about the cat extractor, it's been a long time, one of those things you do early on then likely never need to do again...provided you remember to zip and copy to DVD your complete mods folder when you get your basic setup settled, then again once you've d'led and installed all the planes, campaigns etc you want for a while, so you can recover easily without having to re-install and tweak everything you spent ages doing first time...including remembering which ones needed the feline remover :)

Thanks Craig. Yes Il-2's worth revisiting. A great sim; never really caught my fancy while it was purely Eastern Front but it's a whole different ball game, now you can so this sort of stuff as well, and more besides: Ivor

Wow! Lovely model and textures Geezer. all those polys...some LODs definitely indicated! As for the pilot, he must be an instant victor in the prize for the most intimidating sim pilot ever, makes BA look positively cuddly, nice touch!

Hi Shoresroad as Panama Red's link doubtless explains: - the 'mods' folder for 2nd generation Third Wire sims doesn't get installed into the same folder you installed the sim, but into a sort of parallel folder structure that's crated when you install, path varies depending on flavour of Windows but in Vista 64 it's [your user name]/saved Games/ThirdWire/FirstEagles 2; and - when first created when you install, the subfolder structire isn't a COMPLETE mirror image of you install folder; only some subfolders are created. You need to use Windows Explorer in the usual way to create manually any extra folders needed by a particular mod eg if the mod needs to go into a subfolder called 'Flight' and it's not there, just create it then install the mod into it. That mission (.msn) file would go into [your user name]/Saved Games/ThirdWire/FirstEagles2/Missions, creating the last subfolder manually yourself, if it's not there, exactly as spelt. Forget about the instruction about swapping the ref to Cambrai to read Verdun. I'm 99% sure this is because Vosgen uses some stiff from the Cambrai terrain, and this arrived only with the FE (1) expansion pack (FE plus expansion pack was later released as 'First Eagles Gold' or FEG. FE2 is an update of FEG and comes complete with the Cambrai terrain (but not the seasonal textures so if Vosgen uses the seasonal ones from FEG for Cambrai, then you won't see them in FE2 as this has only single season textures. To get seasonal textures you'll need to add Jan Tuma's set of another user-made set which has them. If it's any consolation I find adding mods to IL-2 more complicated than FE2! No air.ini files to locate and edit etc. the most complicated thing I came up against was getting some markings (decals) to show on planes like the FE8 that are designed for FE(1), which took a bit of digging to trace the issue, then it was a simple Wordpad edit or two.

Hi Shores Skyhigh's list is a good base set. If you want to head off to 'sunny Italy' then Gterl's combined terrain and campaign is great. No reason to delay doing that, you can start right there if you wish. You might want to create a separate install for Italy: copy + paste FirstEagles2.exe into the folder you installed the sim alongside the original .exe so you get FirstEagles2 (copy).exe. Then remane this copy to something like FE2Italy.exe and run it. Doing this will create a separate 'mod' folder, alongside the sim's original one - like [your user name]/Saved Games/ThirdWire/FE2Italy. Install the mods for Italy there. This isn't strictly necessary, but it will mean that when you add more Western Front-only planes, you won't see these appearing in any single missions you run on your Italian install. The Italian theatre d/l readme lists the other mods (planes, mainly) you need to install, so go get 'em. Most are available here at CA. As for the stuff you need at the A Team Skunkworks, you need to apply by email for access to the functional download page and once granted, take great care to stick to the site's rules particularly the limit on concurrent downloads.

The Fat Lady sings! I banked hard right to clear the masts of the cargo ships berthed next to the destroyer. The Zero banked too, but went slightly wide, perhaps in a last-minute effort to avoid the Navy tracers streaking towards him. Just when I thought he was going to get past unscathed, an AA round burst right on top of him. For a split second it looked like the Zero had got away with it. But then he staggered and burst into flames! The 'Zeke' seemed unable to recover from his bank, and nosing down, he sped at full tilt towards the ground, trailing a long banner of orange fire. At the last moment, the Japanese pilot made a desperate attempt to escape from his plunging fighter. The Zero's canopy flew off. But at that low altitude and at that airspeed, he didn't have a chance. The Zero smashed into the ground at a terrific speed and simply disintegrated. As I banked away, its firey fragments bounced and then scattered across the ground behind me. Phew! The Navy had done it again, God bless their cotton socks! Mightily relieved, I started gaining altitude. It now looked like I might be making it back to base after all. Naturally my first act - after gratefully kissing the Port Moresby concrete - would be to deliver a crate or two of cold beer to the Navy boys who had saved my bacon - twice! I looked around. To my right, inland and above me, was a ragged group of single-engined aircraft, flying slowly west. They weren't atttacting any AA fire and in fact they were the P-39s who had accompanied us off the ground. They seemed to have come through the battle with perhaps a couple of losses. There was still some desultory AA fire going on but apart from the P-39s and the odd other aircraft here and there, the air fighting seemed to have died away. After orbiting in an ascending spiral, I throttled back and gave the flight the order to return to base. I could have recalled them and gone in search of any remaining enemies I could find but ammo was likely to be low all round - with the possible exception of my own wingman! - and I'd had enough for one day. Time to go home! The airfield defences were still firing nervously but thankfully, they left me alone. The last excitement of the day came on short finals. An aircraft which I could see was landing ahead of me - which turned out to be one of the two missing Airacobras - slowed unexpectedly quickly after touchdown and turned off the runway just past the threshold. Fortunately he kept going so I was spared the necessity of going around. Back on terra firma and taxying back to dispersal, I could see that a few fires were burning and that one of the B-25s, at the end of a row parked in front of some hangars, was looking a bit the worse for wear. But otherwise, our base seemed to have come through the raid quite lightly. Had those Bettys made a determined bombing attack in formation, it would have been a different matter. The debrief showed my flight had scored two kills, one of them my Betty. The other one was likely this fellow. He looks like the one I had damaged and left smoking, but he'd since taken more damage than I'd left him with so he was likely our flight's second kill. The raid had comprised 15-20 of these bombers, escorted by the two Oscars and the four Zeros. As for the raid's results, I had seen that at least two aircraft had been destroyed on the ground, a P-40 and a B-25. Considering the scale of the opposition, we had not done too badly, though next time I will be less wary of the rear gunners and make better use of my ammunition. Not a bad start though. Even though the Army now owed the Navy a favour or two! Overall, this was a great mission, thoroughly enjoyable, despite those strangely indecisive and ineffectual Bettys. IL-2 still looks just great, with lovely environmental effects including very effective lighting, glistening, animated water and clouds complete with shadows on the ground. With successive editions and all the community input adding content, features and improvements, the sim has aged rather well and in the proceess has lost some things I for one disliked, such as the 'sniper' gunners, the awful droning external engine sounds and aircraft markings that looked like badly-applied kit decals. With the Eastern Front now just one of the many experiences available and looking fantastic on even a modest system, IL-2 '46 is one sim that will be keeping me happy for a very long time to come.

The end of the line? The other Zero - who as ahead of the one the Navy clobbered - had stayed low and right behind me. In doing so he escaped his comrade's fate and - unscathed, even as the second 'Zeke's's remains fell from the sky - the enemy fighter sped over the destroyer - and straight after me. Where was my wingman? Nowhere in sight! The IL-2 wingman commands are pretty comprehensive but the nested menus can make them slow and distracting to issue - especially when you have an angry Zero right behind you. If there were hotkeys for the more common or pressing wingman commands in IL-2 that I didn't know, this was not a good time to go looking for them! Tracers sped close past me at intervals as I jinked and swung around. My only consolation was that the enemy seemed to be out of rounds for his wing-mounted cannon, leaving him with just his rifle-calibre cowling MGs. At full throttle I fled over the water, as low as I dared. The Zero clung to me like a limpet. I tried to steer back towards the destroyer; all I could think of was having another go at luring the second Zero to destruction at the hands of its AA gunners, who seemed quite good at swatting low-flying enemy aircraft. I edged towards the harbour, but it was impossible to keep a straight course under fire and I ended up going wide and across the headland. As I crossed the headland, the Zero made a diving pass which took him below me. For a moment I hoped that he was not going to pull out in time...but no such luck. He recovered and using the speed built up in his dive he was soon behind and just above me and firing again. Out over the water again, I reversed course back towards the harbour, with the Zero still after me. Rounds spashed in the water to my right as I made the final dash towards the destrover. Running in over the last hundred yards or so, I could see that the Navy was doing its level best. The muzzle flashes from the destroyer's 20mm and 40mm light AA weapons were the proof of that. I was now pretty well out of ideas. Would my gambit work a second time? I would soon find out. ...to be continued!

Thanks for the positive feedback guys! I'll finish this report now!

Hi Dave That must have been before somebody found out how to neuter those rear gunners! Did your Bettys mill about aimlessly, too? All I can think is that neutering the bomber skill level may have been the problem on my mission. Anyway I'm off to get some kip, will finish the mission report tomorrow evening. Ivor

The navy to the rescue! From the Japanese raid on Port Moresby, I had definitely destroyed one G4M 'Betty' bomber and badly damaged a second. I hadn't heard or seen much from my flight's number three and four since cutting them loose at the start of the battle. But having spotted two Zeros low down to the east, I was glad to see my own wingman was back with me. With my own ammo long exhausted, I led him up in a climbing turn, away from the enemy fighters, who had shown no sign of having spotted us. However, seen us they had. P-40s were renowned for being able to leave a Japanese fighter in a dive. But a climb...well, that was a different matter. See what I mean? They say that a bad plan is better than no plan at all. And in an air fight, speed is vital - to quote the RAF's No.13 Group's 'Forget-me-nots for Fighters', 'Don't hang about thinking up something clever.' So I made a plan - fast. Enemy forces - one Zero closing up from below and behind, likely the second one close behind him. Friendly forces - me, unarmed, and my wingman closer behind me...and the Navy. Earlier on, I'd noticed flashes of pretty vigorous AA fire from a friendly warship in Port Moresby's little harbour. In all the excitement, I was lucky not to have forgotten. But I hadn't and so here's the plan. Climbing away from the Zeros was definitely not working. So I would wing over and dive, calling my wingman to cover me. Hopefully, in the dive I'd gain some ground, while luring at least one of the Zeros after me, thus setting up a kill for my number two. 'Roping the dope', I think they call it, nowadays. Except that there were two of them, and neither might be dopes. So the second part of my plan was that, as I dived, I would swing towards the harbour, and draw the enemy into a nice little concentration of naval AA fire at low level. If my wingman didn't get them - or at least, drive them off - hopefully the boys behind the AA guns on that warship would manage it. My own rather more plausible version of the gambit in the Pearl Harbour movie, if you like. So I winged over and dived hard for Mother Earth, with two Zeros snapping at my heels and my wingman roughly in the middle somwhere. Nearing the ground, I pulled up heading for the harbour. There, I could now see that the friendly warship appeared to be a USN destroyer; a modern Fletcher class job, by the look of it. So far, so good. The destroyer's 5 inch main guns were trained out and in action as well as the lighter stuff. It was quite scary, flying straight into the muzzles of that little lot and hoping that the gunners' aircraft recognition would be first class and their aim, even better. Head-on, one single-engined fighter isn't that easy to tell from another. But despite the fact that WW2 USN people will have been much more accustomed to seeing radial-engined friendly planes, the boys on this destroyer seemed to know a P-40 when they saw one. Unscathed, I flashed over them, just above mast-head height. One of the Zeros wasn't so lucky. One moment he was there, the next there was a flash, and flaming debris rained down, scattering across the port and into the water. Hooray for the Navy! One Zero down, one to go! ...to be continued!

Betty bows out Having clobbered one of the enemy bombers, I had a good look around. The formation of Bettys whose numbers I had just thinned out seemed still to be heading west, down the southern coast of New Guinea. Were they retreating, or heading on to bomb a target further into our territory? Neither of the above, as it happened. Looking back in the direction of our airfield, I could see that there were aircraft milling about all over the place. The airfield defence people were banging away into the middle of all this, so there was evidently still a raid of some description going on. At the time I didn't see any pattern, but this is roughly what was happening. The Japanese 'top cover' seemed to consist of a pair of Army fighters; namely these two Ki-43 'Oscars'. They didn't seem to feel much affinity for their naval coIleagues because I never saw any evidence that they came down to intervene in the proceedings. Perhaps they were engaged with the Airacobras at some point but they didn't seem to bother my lot. Meanwhile, lower down, were the Zeros. There were apparently four of these, including the pair I'd seen diving as the raid came in. Two were 'Hamps', the clipped-wing version; the other two were conventional model 'Zekes' of Pearl Harbour fame. The square-tipped 'Hamps' seemed to be doing most of the damage in this raid, including this strafing attack, which claimed a P-40 from a group parked on the grass. The really strange thing was the behaviour of the Bettys. There were more of them than the six I'd attacked, and they seemed to be doing most of the milling about. Perhaps from our attacks, their formations seemed to have broken up. Every so often, one or two of the bombers would fly over our airfield, or one of the other airstrips in the area. There seemed to be three - ours, the largest, another slightly smaller one to the north-west, and a smaller airfield to the east. Perhaps the Bettys - true to the characteristic commonly ascribed to their feminine counterparts - couldn't make up their minds. They seemed to make shallow diving attacks from different levels, every so often. But I never saw a bomb hit. I remember reading somewhere that when carrying bombs, the G4M's bomb-bay doors were removed. Later, watching the replay of the mission track I saved, I had a look at a couple, and this is what I saw - open (or missing) bomb bay doors and just two tiny bombs inside. At one point watching a Betty from above in the replay, I thought I heard the whistle of falling bombs, but there were no explosions. I believe that setting 'MaxBomberSkill=0' in you IL-2 configuration file is necessary to neuter the 'sniper' rear gunners - you know, the ones who, nearly every time, put a round straight through the armour glass windscreen of your Messerschmitt 109G and knock your reflector sight askew, without harming you. But I also gather this setting reduces the skill level of bombers across the board. Perhaps this was a factor in the Bettys' strange performance. Meanwhile, back at the war...the skies over our base being full of these Bettys milling about in ones and twos, and with no sign of enemy fighters, I thought I had better have another crack at one, with my remaining ammunition. So I re-joined the party, chasing after a pair of bombers which had started a shallow diving attack, as I approached. Again, the Betty I attacked proved to be fast and hard to catch. He eventually pulled up streaming a light trail of smoke from his port engine. At this point I caught up and fired off the rest of my ammo at him, breaking away under return fire from his dorsal gun position but not, thank goodness, from that nasty 20mm cannon in his tail. Meanwhile, his comrades continued their diving attacks, or attack-like diving manoeuvres, or whatever they were. With my own wingman still in tow but out of rounds myself, I climbed up and made a wide circuit around my airfield. My plan now was to assess the situation and if it seemed favourable, to cut loose my number two for an attack of his own, on a suitable target. I would follow him, reversing roles. With no ammo, I would be able to do little more that watch out for danger and if all else fails, see if the IL-2 AI pilots could be scared off by an unarmed enemy plane on their 'six'. Given that the AI often seem to break when you're closing in on them and are just about to open fire, I was optimistic on that score. As I orbited at higher level, the skies seemed to be somewhat clearer. Our airfield's AA was still cutting loose at intervals so there were still some bad guys around. But none came our way. Deciding the time was right, as I arrived to the east of Port Moresby, I gave my wingman the command to 'attack all'. Off he went, first rolling over and diving, then pulling up and going into a climbing turn. I gamely followed, wondering what on earth he had in mind. This went on for a bit, until I lost patience and called him back. At that point, I banked around and looked below. There, just inland, I could see a couple of pale-coloured single-engined aircraft, heading in opposite directions, quite low down. Zeros! ...to be continued!

Battle of the Bettys I climbed as steeply as I dared, trying to intercept or head off the six enemy bombers up ahead of me, which I judged - correctly as it turned out - to be Japanese G4M 'Bettys'. These long-range and well-armed bombers, I knew, had a reputation for being rather vulnerable to enemy fire. This hypothesis I intended to put to the test, very soon. But not that soon. Caught at such a height disadvantage, there was no way I was going to be able to hit them in a climbing attack from ahead and below. Instead, I was forced to watch them sail past over my head, out of range. I had to reverse my course again and now found myself chasing the bombers. For whatever reason, they seemed not to have bombed our airfield, despite having passed more or less right over it. But this was not the time to ponder this deliverance. There was work to be done. One of the bombers seemed to be lagging, on the left rear of the small enemy formation. So I went for him, by now at last nearly up to the enemy's level. As I began to close on my intended victim, I remembered my flight, and gave the radio command for a general attack. There's no time for anything fancy, so let's all just get stuck into them now, I thought. The 'Betty' was quite fast and maintained a left-hand turn as I closed. Wary of the 20mm tail gun I seemed to recall these bombers had, I fired without getting too close, relying instead on putting a bigger shower of flying metal into the air from my six 50 calibre MGs than my foe could manage in return. Such tactics were not conducive to conserving ammunition but soon began to produce results. I saw hits flicker on his airframe, then a small orange fireball exploded somewhere in his rear fuselage. Trusting - or at least, hoping - that this damage might have put off his waist and tail gunners, I closed more confidently, continuing to snap out short bursts. Finally, a fuel tank in his starboard inner wing burst into flames. That ought to do it! Wisely, the burning Betty's crew decided the time had come to part company with their aircraft. I left them to it and pulled up and away. Scratch one enemy bomber! ...to be continued!

Into battle! With throttle wide and flaps down two notches, I roared off, using differential braking and then rudder to keep her straight, but still grateful for the wide concrete runway. At first I climbed hard roughly eastwards, away from the incoming raid. I wanted to gain as much height as I could, before swinging around towards the enemy. The base fell away behind and below me. With its plentiful hangarage, storage tanks, barracks and parked aircraft, it was more than likely that our own base would be the object of the enemy attack. I didn't want to return to a smoking ruin! So maintaining my course to the east, I climbed hard. This didn't last long. Behind me, the airfield AA sprang into life. That bl**dy raid must be coming in right behind us! Easing off my rate of climb I turned hard left, hoping my flight, clawing for height in my wake, would do a good job of keeping up but having no time to look for them. Likewise, as I rolled out of my turn, I had no time to admire the nice view I now had of Port Moresby itself, to my left. My attention was focused instead on the patch of sky above and now ahead of me, into which was soaring intermittent streams of tracer fire from the airfield's defenders. Where was the enemy? They weren't hard to spot. As I watched, a pair of specks wheeled around then fell from the sky. They looked too agile for dive bombers, so I took them to be enemy fighters of some description, likely going after either the AA guns or the parked planes. But I wasn't watching them. Right ahead in serried ranks were two 'vics' of what looked like twin engined bombers, heading right for me. Plan made. The enemy fighters I had seen had dived down and were not offering combat; not right now, anyway. My priority was to hit these bombers while I could, preferably in time to disrupt their bombing of my own airfield, assuming - as seemed very likely - that this was their target. ...to be continued!

Holding the line against the Japanese onslaught in New Guinea! There's no point disputing matters of taste - as the Latin saying goes, 'de gustibus non est disputandum'. But if there was a contest for the most attractive US WW2 fighter, the Curtiss P-40 would get my vote. Especially the later models with that long, deep radiator bath under the nose, with or without the famous 'sharkmouth' marking. The P-40 is of course celebrated mainly for its exploits with the American Volunteer Group in the China-Burma-India theatre and with the British and Commonwealth air forces (and later the USAAF) in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations. While the Warhawk/Tomahawk/Kittyhawk lacked the high-altitude performance to keep it competitive later in the war, the P-40 made a vital contribution to the middle part of the Allied war effort, adding service in Russia to its many laurels. There's some great P-40 warbird action here, courtesy of New Zealand's Historic Aviation Film Unit, showing the -C, -E and -N variants: Up to now, my simulation 'stick time' with the P-40 has been very largely limited to some action in CFS2, made up between Just Flight's 'Pearl Harbour' add on and the user mod package 'In Defence of Australia: http://www.justflight.com/product/pearl-harbor http://jamcraft.net/DoA_42v2/Docs/RAAF_Expansion_Pack_v2.htm My appetite for another crack with the P-40 was recently whetted in unusual circumstances. Having in my last mission report castigated the flying sequences in the movies 'Red Tails' and 'Pearl Harbour', I decided to watch that footage again, to see if I still thought it as contrived and inane as I did first time around. The answer was a resounding 'Hell, yes!' I mean, guys on the ground talking to pilots in 1941 on a 'walkie-talkie' to arrange an ambush for Zeros by placing rifles, MGs and a shotgun(!) on a tower? Not to mention that the same two intrepid P-40 pilots had just impossibly arranged a game of 'chicken' between opposing fighters...I mean, why not just jump out on the wing and knock them down with light sabres, which would have been as realistic? But P-40s feature prominently in both films and you can't help but admire the planes, however silly are the things they're made to do by the total muppets who dream up this sort of nonsense, when the real thing could be just as cinematic. IL-2 '46 has an outstanding selection of P-40s and includes a USAAF Pacific fighter pilot campaign featuring the type. So that was my sim of choice. The variants available in IL-2 include: P-40B: P-40C: Tomahawk: P-40E: P-40M: With IL-2 - and presumably, this came originally with the 'Pacific Fighters' installment - you can opt to fly the PTO campaign I had in mind with the US Army Air Force, starting with Pearl Harbour in December 1941. I choose instead to start with the next segment of the campaign, during the following year. It was 30 July 1942, soon after Japanese fortunes had been spectacularly and decisively reversed at the aero-naval Battle of Midway. Still intent on isolating rather than invading Australia by seizing Port Moresby on eastern New Guinea, just across the Coral Sea from northern Australia, the Japanese attacked overland, along the Kokoda Trail. Such is the dramatic period in WW2 covered by this IL-2 campaign, with mainly US and Australian forces pitted against the Japanese drive to Moresby. Here's the briefing for the campaign segment's first mission. And there's no time to lose - it's a 'scamble' to intercept an enemy raid, said to be coming in from the south-west! I was at the head of a flight of just four P-40Es; and here we are, lined up on the concrete at Port Moresby's main airfield. We're not alone, though; behind us are no less than six Army P-39 Airacobras. There were quite a few other aircraft parked around the airfield, including some B-25 Mitchell bombers and some more P-40s. But we four and those P-39s seemed to be the only available aircraft for this sortie. All the more reason to get off without further ado, and gain what height we could. As it turned out, that wouldn't be much. ...to be continued!

Hi Shoresroad! I have a modest system (8800GT + early quad core) and have both FEG and FE2. I didn't get a massive FPS boost, just a modest one (don't have the figures). A few people say they prefer FEG but most including myself seem to prefer FE2. I have the FEG seasonal textures installed in FE2 as I like the stock terrain textures (winter set seen below on the user-made Vogesen terrain)... ...but could just as easily have gone for a modder's terrain texture set (Jan Tuma's is popular) which does include its own seasonal textures. This set has is a modified version of the stock seasonal terrains for FE/FEG: http://combatace.com/files/file/9756-first-eagles-stock-terrains-visual-upgrade/ (some mods lost their d/l page pics a while back but the mods are still there) And here's Jan Tuma's set: http://combatace.com/files/file/10549-first-eagles-seasonal-tiles-by-jan-tuma/ For the Western Front, the Flanders terrain is also worth having: http://combatace.com/files/file/4424-first-eagles-flanders-terrain/ ,,and there's the Vogesen terrain: http://combatace.com/files/file/5933-vogesen-terrain-version-10/ ...and of course if you fancy warmer climes - at least down in the valleys - there's Gterl's superb Italian terrain, which includes a campaign for the theatre: http://combatace.com/files/file/14440-italian-terrain-incl-1915-1917-campaign/ 'Second Generation' Third Wire sims like FE2 have a different install process than earlier ones like FEG, mainly as the former installs mods outside of the program files folder (they go into a sort of parallel file folder set - the so-called 'mods' folder, under your username instead). And for terrain textures, the name of the subfolder these go into was changed, too, from 'terrain' [singular] to 'terrains' [plural]. Worth noting if you're installing terrain. Most mods (except effects) designed for FE/FEG work fine with FE2, they just need installed the new way, which may not be described in their readmes. Main point is that the decal markings for planes need copied to a 'decals' subfolder - Stephen1918's planes are recent and have installation instructions for both FE and FE2 so check out his readmes. Other things I think are better in FE2 are the effects - for example, smoke columns last longer and there are persistent aircraft wreck models whereas in FEG wrecked planes just explode and disappear: I seem to recall finding the AI improved in FE2. Horizon distances are I think also greater in FE2, setting for setting and with a higher furthest horizon before the 'fog' cuts in (though I had to edit the setting MeshDetailSize - increasing it to 22, it's in FirstEagles2/Flight/Flightengine.ini - to avoid objects like the buildings in towns having somewhat too close a draw distance, now they are drawn far away). The only negative to me is that weather doesn't change randomly in FE2 campaigns, but I believe there's a mod which provides a manual workaround. Good hunting/gute jagd!

Joining the Caterpillar Club, Imperial Japanese Army chapter Evidently, the chap screaming over the radio had not been my wingman. The latter was very much in business, as it turned out, despite having last been seen going down vertically. In fact he had recovered sufficiently to chase the two Wildcats off my tail. Great stuff! Definitely worth a bottle of saké in the officer's club, later. However, it was expecting rather a lot for him to keep both of the Americans tied up, and sure enough, one of them was soon after me, all over again. Out of rounds, I milled around with the Wildcat for a bit, exploiting my Hayabusa's superior manoeuvrability to avoid his fire. All the while, I was edging lower and closer to my airfield, now just a few hundred feet below. Finally, having opened out the gap between us, I grabbed my chance and dived again for the airfield, intending to make a sharp pull up and left turn onto short finals and then plonk my kite down on the nearer edge of the runway. I could only hope that the airfield flak would cover my backside for the last lap of my escape bid. I didn't get far. I'm not sure if it was the Wildcat I was dodging or if another one had slipped in behind me. But suddenly there were rounds slamming into my aeroplane which quickly burst into flames. Clearly, it was time to take my leave and make my application for membership of the Caterpillar Club. I'm assuming here that there was a Japanese branch of the exclusive society whose members were entitled to wear the little caterpillar badge, signifying a silkworm and the fact that the wearer had saved his life by means of a parachute descent. I broke right and upwards in an effort to get out of the merciless hail of 50 caliber tracer fire before 'hitting the silk'. Then I bailed out. I wasn't the only one. Not all the casualties had been Japanese, though. The American formation seemed to have swung to the north, where perhaps their real targets lay. Anyhow, our battle was over. The mission debriefing recorded the enemy raid as having comprised ten Avengers, four Hellcats and another ten Wildcats. It was no wonder, then, that it had been such a hard fight for the six of us. We lost two pilots killed and four wounded, but were credited with three kills, including my Avenger. Quite a mission! The main problem was my obsolescent Hayabusa; I really should have had a Ki-43-II with the more powerful motor and two heavy MGs, instead of one heavy and one light. But it was great fun and looked brilliant, with IL-2's excellent visuals and environmental effects at the highest settings. I should also have replaced the stock Ki-43 skin with a better one, preferably in my favourite mottle finish and with the normal yellow inner leading edges, which the stock skin lacks for some reason. Not that I didn't equally enjoy and appreciate the CFS2 Hayabusa mission I'd flown just before this one; but defending Tarawa in IL-2 '46 + DBW certainly gave me a deep impression of the increasing desperation the Japanese fliers must have felt, up against superior numbers of superior planes flown by some of America's finest. Highly recommended.

It ain't over till the fat Geisha sings It looked like the American raid on our island base was now moving on. Having expended all my ammunition on my damaged Avenger, I was disinclined to go after them. Instead, I wheeled around above the spiraling American bomber, to make sure he didn't slip away. If there was any doubt that he was going down, I would order my faithful wingman to clobber him. I'm not really sure that Japanese fighter leaders had individual wingman - sources tend to suggest they fought samurai-style, in individual combat, not in the accepted Western tactical formations. Anyway the flight-mate trailing behind me seemed to favour Western tactics and I hadn't the heart to tell him to clear off and do his own thing. It was about this time that I became aware that the enemy had not entirely cleared off, either. Below and ahead of me, were two small, grey single-engined aircraft. Stubby fuselages, rectangular wings - I recognised them immediately. Wildcat fighters. Not so good! I watched them carefully, maintaining my height advantage. Would they come up after us? The answer seemed to be 'no'. They fell behind us and slipped out to sea, away from our base. Relaxing somewhat, I returned my attention to the damaged Avenger. Was he going down, or was he not? The jury seemed to be still out on that one. I flew over our airfield. Then I noticed that the American was going down more steeply than before. He seemed to have rolled out of his spiral. Down he went, towards the glittering surface of the ocean below. This kill would be mine! I looked behind. My wingman was still with me, just to my left. But to the right, not much further back, a sudden shock! Two Wildcats, and they were coming straight at us! I did two things at more or less the same time. I stuffed down my nose and dived for my airfield. Diving away from a heavier US fighter was not a good idea as a rule. I knew that much. But our base was not far below me and I planned to draw the enemies onto the fire of our AA guns. This course of action immediately showed promise, as the flak boys quickly started shooting, which I could see from the muzzle flashes down below me. And if this didn't do the trick, well that would be where the other thing I did, would pay off. Hopefully. I ordered my wingman to cover me. Just in case he hadn't already decided it was time to do that. Which it didn't look like he had. Looking back again, all I could see now were two Wildcats. Closer than before. That part of my cunning plan seemed to go quickly from bad to worse. I have on-screen subtitles turned off but I didn't need to understand a syllable of Japanese - which I don't - to realise that the voice that suddenly screamed at me over the radio in that language was from someone who was definitely not having a good day. Looking behind again, I saw my wingman's Hayabusa going straight down in a vertical nose dive. Ooops! ...to be continued!

Haven't played WOFF - the considerable hike in minimum systems spec from OFF puts it out of my reach, despite being able to play RoF fine on great-looking medium settings - but I rate FE2 as much the best current WW1 sim. FEG with the latest patches is said by Third Wire to be the same as FE2 functionally but as Panama Red said the latter is better for multi-core systems. Biggest difference is that FE2 doesn't not have the seasonal terrain that FEG has and that campaign weather in FEG changes as you go but stays as it is at the start in FE2 (less of an issue if you play Ojcar's Armchair Aces as each month starts a new campaign, in effect. WOFF's AI seems to have caught up somewhat on FE's but IMHO the sim is still too reliant on the CFS3 'tactical display' (eg to padlock or issue some important orders) and I'm not sure that the new 'dot mode' fix for planes being invisible beyond about a mile and a half is a really satisfactory substitute for better level of detail models which make the plane itself visible at longer ranges. The new hi-res plane and terrain textures look very good indeed, if you've the system to handle them. With the free downloads, with FEG/FE2 you can have a couple of hundred flyable WW1 planes including variants, compared to fifty-plus in WOFF. Plenty you won't find in other sims: You can't gun in the 2-seaters, which you can in OFF/WOFF and RoF, but boy, there are a lot of them to fly in FE, multi-seat planes too; again, many you won't find in any other sim: And FE supports different theatres, including Italy... ...the North Sea... (with no land admittedly but there are ships and seaplanes), the Eastern Front and soon, Palestine. FE planes - even the user-made ones - are nearly all excellent, and look great thanks to bump-mapping in many cases and self-shadowing (which WOFF may get from Ankor's new mod, but they still are seen thru CFS3''s distorting wide angle lens effect in external view). There are other great touches in FE. The subtle head-bobbing means you feel you're in a moving plane not looking at a graphic superimposed on the scenery. You get excellent stall buffet effects - visible and audible - so you know when you're on the edge of a stall or a spin - much, much better than OFF or RoF and a pretty big plus in a dogfight. The aircrew animations - minimal in OFF/WOFF - are really great; none of RoF's visible hand signals and observers don't sit down but in RoF the gunners sit down too much and the RoF pilot animations don't feature adequate head-turning to scan; you get plenty of this in FE: Flak is a much better target indicator in FE than it is in RoF and not excessively deadly. IMHO FE's campaigns are absolutely second to none and on balance, not at all inferior to OFF's. The basic squad management element encourages you to identify with and look after your flight-mates. Depending on the campaign, front lines can move as ground operations develop. Squadrons can have ace pilots. Your planes usually have not only representative squadron, escadrille or Jasta colours, but unique markings for each plane in a flight eg serial numbers and aircraft letters and for the Germans, individual pilot badges or markings: The FE view system is great - at least as good as RoF's, on balance; and much better than OFF's CFS3-based view system. No reason not to try and buy them all. All three are best at something no doubt. But in my experience FE is the best WW1 air combat single player campaign experience - patrol-leading and air-to-air combat are what it excels at and are the most important things for a WW1 sim to do well - and it's the best value by a large margin, when you consider the mods (and you should as they are free and effectively part of the 'package'). Try RoF too as it's free and give Pat Wilson's Campaign Generator a go; buy extra planes if you like it, if not, what have you lost?

Banzai!!! I was by now closing steadily on an Avenger who was on the right of the enemy's leading element. I remembered the story of Zero ace Saburo Sakai, who was nearly killed over Gaudalcanal by an Avenger's rear gunner while approaching from behind what was then, to him, an unfamiliar single-engined aircraft. I have 'bomberskill=3' set in IL-2's conf.ini configuration file, which is recommended to tone down 'sniper' gunners, but I have been whacked often enough making an unsophisticated pass from behind - probably quite realistically - to know that I was still taking my virtual life in my hands here. The range was still quite long. But I might be dead the next second. So I started snapping out short bursts, noticing as I did so that the other Avengers were starting to wheel to the right. I had seen no bombs dropped...had I missed that? Had the Avengers simply picked a flak-ridden airfield as a rather dangerous waypoint? Or perhaps, had we actually succeeded in putting them off their stride and saving our base from their bombs? Hard to tell. But there was business to be getting on with, regardless. I saw muzzle flashes wink at me from my target's rear gun turret but his rounds went wide. I bored right in, seeing some tracer smoke trails high and left, evidently from comrades pitching in...so I had not been alone in this. My Avenger now seemed to be falling back out of the sky towards me and more of my bursts were producing hits, whose flashes splattered his wing roots and rear fuselage. Fragments of the Avenger swept past me. He wasn't turning with the others...but he wasn't going down, either. To Hell with my plane's feeble armament! And to Hell with the brass in Tokyo who kept us flying such relics! A sheet of whiteness was spreading in my windscreen - clouds! The American looked to be trying to slip away into cloud cover, and it seemed like he was about to make it. Just as we were both engulfed in the cloud, the Avenger at last spouted a stream of dark smoke and curved down and right. Just as well, for at that very moment, my ammunition gave out. The clouds were not deep and we were soon through into bright skies again. I watched the Yank swing away. The return fire seemed to have ceased. Phew! Looking beyond the smoking Avenger, I could see that there was a fight going on between several aircraft. It looked to be the remaining Avengers, harried by my flight-mates. My target was still descending in a wide spiral and I cut across the enemy formation as I watched him go. My wingman was still with me and I decided that I would order him in, to give the coup de grace, if the Avenger hung about much longer, before taking the final plunge. I was quite keen to be credited with this kill but equally, as I was now disarmed, I would present him to my number two rather than let him escape. ...to be continued!

The Yanks are coming... I climbed hard, without waiting for my flight to catch up. That could come later, once I'd gained a few thousand feet. My lightly-built aircraft rose steadily, till I was passing the first clouds, out on my right, by now settled onto a roughly southerly course. And there they were! Looking half right, I saw a ragged group of dark specks between banks of clouds, heading on a reciprocal course - straight at the airfield I had just left! They were too far away to identify the type, but I felt sure that they could only be the incoming American raid. Still climbing, I banked right and swung in towards them. As I cleared the tops of the intervening clouds, I saw that the first group - which I had intended to cut in behind - was merely the lead element in what looked to be a long procession of enemies. This wasn't quite what I had been banking on! Now what? What's the plan, now? I hesitated. My initial thought was, safety first - go wide and come in behind the end of the procession. I could not tell from their appearance or their formation which were bombers and which were fighters. If I stuck with my original plan, I would be sandwiching myself between the lead elements and those behind, some of whom might well be fighters who would then pounce on us. A dangerous and perhaps foolish move. It seemed the better tactic would be for me to go wide and play 'Devil take the hindmost' with the rear of the procession; by which time I should also have gained a better picture of the enemy's dispositions. But my job was to defend our island base. And the American formation was practically on top of it. That thought sealed the deal. Dangerous or not, I had to try to disrupt the attack by hitting the leading enemies, as quickly as I could. So I continued to curve in towards my original target, the leading enemy flight. At the same time, I gave the radio order for a general attack, reckoning that the sooner we all got amongst them, the better. At this point I cursed again my obsolescent mount. Its tubular, Aldis-stye gun-sight, used with the standard long eye relief that works just fine with a reflector sight, blocked rather important parts of my view ahead. Even after I had used Ctrl+D to swing aside the front sight cap, the cap itself added to the problem. Oh, for the reflector sight that came with the later Hayabusa our outfit should have been flying by now! I could have switched to the 'no cockpit' view (or perhaps there's another forward view which helps). But I decided to make do and get on with it. Closing in steadily, I noticed as the range wound down that my target was a flight of Avengers, who seemed intent on bombing our airfield in a shallow dive. We would see about that! ...to be continued!

Defending 'Bloody Tarawa' in the Ki-43 'Hayabusa'! Having enjoyed flying the Nakajima Ki-43 in an island defence mission courtesy of CFS2 and Yoshi's 'Battle of Chishima' campaign, I was keen to see what IL-2 had to offer, in the same department. IL-2 1946 includes the previous 'Pacific Fighters' installment so I opted to use this, combined with Dark Blue World, the premier add-on package for offline IL-2 fans. If you want to see the real Hayabusa in action, you probably can't do better that this war-time film: This looks to be a reconstruction for the cameramen of a 25 December 1941 Imperial Japanese Army raid on Rangoon, Burma by Ki-21 'Sally' bombers with a Ki-43 'Oscar' escort. Even though I suspect it has no real combat footage, it's pretty good stuff, and includes some staged dogfights between Hayabusas and a P-40 and Buffalo. There's some impressive Japanese model-making skill on display too but it all gets blown up in the 'bombing'! The real Christmas Day raid on Rangoon is described in some detail in Chapter 7 of Grub Street's 'Bloody Shambles' by Shores, Cull & Izawa and involved over 60 Ki-21s escorted by 25 Hayabusas, followed by another thirty-plus Ki-21s covered by a similar number of Ki-27s and was intercepted by both the American Volunteer Group and the RAF. The defenders reportedly believed they had definitely shot down at least 42 enemy aircraft but Japanese losses are said to have been two Ki-43s, the same number of Ki-27s and three Ki-21s, plus a handful more force-landed; casualties on the ground were more clear cut and were estimated at 5,000 killed. The Hayabusa also stars in the recent Japanese movie 'For Those We Love', about the Kamikazes, notably in the final climactic attack on a US Task Force. The flying sequences look to be filmed with a mix of scale models, CGI and full-size taxying replicas, and have the odd contrived moment, but they totally put to shame the high production value but inane and inept combat footage in films like 'Red Tails' or 'Pearl Harbour'. This is the link to what I believe is the legitimate official trailer on Youtube (as opposed to the 'unofficial' uploads which include the final attack in full): As for the simulation equivalent, while CFS2 features the mid-production Ki-43-II (shorter span wing and two heavy MGs), IL-2 '46 + DBW provides virtually the 'full Monty', from the early Ki-43-I with longer-span wing, tubular gun sight and two rifle-calibre MGs, through later versions with one heavy and one light MG; to the Ki-43-II with reflector sight, more powerful engine, two HMGs, shorter span wing and extra intake in the lip of the upper cowling; and the Ki-43-III with separate exhaust ejector stubs. See for yourself: Ki-43-I Ki-43-II Ki-43-III The mission I forgot to create a new pilot so I ended up with a rather un-Japanese named left-over pilot! But having created a stock IJA fighter campaign, I was pleased to see that I didn't have to start with the long flights of the Malayan operations but could choose to begin later, in November 1943, on defensive operations - just before the US Marines came ashore in Operation Galvanic - defending Tarawa atoll itself. I'd picked a starting rank high enough to lead operations, which is how I like it. Here's the briefing for the first mission - and it's 'in at the deep end' with a 'scramble', to intercept an incoming enemy raid. I'd have appreciated some information on the the enemy's height and maybe numbers, but at least I knew they were coming and roughly where they were coming from! Here we are on the airfield - six of us, lined up and good to go. CFS2 formation takeoffs are in pairs and quite brisk, but while I believe the Team Diadolos patches now support formation takeoffs, in DBW it's as per the stock IL-2 'conga line'. This is the 'vanilla' IL-2 Ki-43-I skin, solid green uppers rather than my preferred mottle. But my main beef here is that it's late 1943, yet we've been given obsolescent early-model Hayabusas, with the original 980hp engine and just one of the rifle-calibre MGs upgraded to a 12.7mm model. Okay for 1941-42 but not so good for this point in hostilities. I haven't checked but maybe it's because this is a stock campaign and the later model Hayabusas come with DBW. Whatever the reason, it appeared that someone at Imperial General Headquarters was being rather parsimonious with the latest kit. And this, despite the fact that, as the briefing reports, we're believed to be facing an attack. And a massive one at that. This being a 'scramble', there was no time to waste musing on the shortcomings of our kit. I don't bother with Complex Engine Management and as I dislike fiddling with radiator flap settings (and have on-screen text suppressed, so don't get 'Engine overheating!' warnings) I have set my motor to keep itself cool, as well. This may not be very 'hard core' but it's just how I like it. So I started up, checked my controls and set flaps to one notch down. Possibly that is actually the 'combat' setting - the Hayabusa being one plane which really did have combat flaps, apparently needed to meet the design requirement to have manoeuvrability comparable to its fixed-undercart monoplane predecessor, the Ki-27 'Nate'. Anyway off I went, followed at intervals by the others. The IL-2 Ki-43 is somewhat higher-polygon than its CFS2 equivalent although its mainwheels are rather angular, side-on anyway. It took me a second or so to realise that the green aircraft parked to my left as I took off were not modern Argentine Pucarras who'd badly lost their way in space and time, but typical Japanese dummy aircraft. They weren't the only ones; further down the runway was parked a row of dummy fighters, the far side of which sat the airfield's real planes, sensibly in blast pens. Some nice touches there! So the mission had begun. Now, where were the Americans? Coming from the south-east, the briefing said, though our flight plan indicated that we should head pretty well due south. Airborne, I raised flaps and undercart and began a turn to the right as I gained height. I could have climbed away from the incoming raid to gain more height before turning south, but orders are orders and they said 'go south'. ...to be continued!

Notwithstanding the movie re-incarnation (or rather, re-invention), wasn't it Manfred von Richtofen who's credited with the dictum, 'Aim for the man not the machine; if attacking a two seater, kill the gunner first.' Works for me: As for real life, why on earth would it be a war crime to shoot an enemy (who had not surrendered or equivalent) in the air or on the ground? I appreciate we're living in times when the Army's marksmanship principles training film* is no likely longer called 'Shoot to Kill' but sheesh! As for shooting people on parachutes, Goering reportedly sounded out German fighter leaders during the Battle of Britian about the practice, asking them how they would react if ordered to do this. He was reportedly rebuffed. Apparently his opponent Dowding thought that the Luftwaffe would be justified in shooting British pilots parachuting to earth over England as, though helpless, they were escaping, potentially to fight another day. From recently reading Norbert Hannig's autobiography 'Luftwaffe Figher Ace', it's evident that some US pilots agreed with Dowding. * the one from my day I was pleased to see is on Youtube:

The falcon strikes again! Leaving my lagging squadron-mates to deal with the last bomber - and finish off my victim, if necessary - I went for another Mitchell. With the leader on fire, the other two had split and turned left. Picking my target, I cut across his turn, noticing for the first time the yellow pencil lines of his tracers streaking back towards me. I stayed low and this seemed to help, for his rounds went wide. But in matching his curve to stay under his tail, I ended up in a tail chase when he straightened out. Closing only slowly and reluctant to take too much of a chance with his heavy defensive weapons, I started snapping out short bursts from my twin heavy MGs, observing the fall of shot and correcting my aim till I started getting some hits. After a few of these, a fire started in his rear fuselage and then he suddenly flipped forward into a steep nosedive. It looked like my rounds had severed his elevator control cables. Two bombers down! That would do nicely! Back in the external, 'spot' view - which I generally fly in, pre- and post-combat, for better appearances and better preipheral vision - I banked left and looked around, wondering what my squadron mates had been up to. I turned on the TAC, to help. While I prefer to avoid such on-screen aids, in fast-moving WW2 or later air combat, it's actually a good way of simulating the results of a few seconds of rapid scanning. No amount of panning or head-tracking can really compensate for the limits of sitting at a monitor and using hardware to perform what the human mind and eye can do so much better and so much more naturally. Likely the TAC over-compensates but I'm not one of those people who equate difficulty with either realism or fun. Fine if that's your thing - each to his own - de gustibus non est disputandum. With the TAC's help, I soon saw what was what. My squadron was to my rear, some of them milling about for some reason; pehaps they were settling the hash of the bomber I had set afire. Other Hayabusas were closing in behind me. But the really interesting thing was that little white arrowhead on the TAC, off to my left, signifying an unidentified aircraft. Looking in the direction indicated, I could see it was a large aeroplane, likely the third Mitchell. I would almost certainly have spotted him without the TAC and so felt no compunction in altering to an intercepting course. My squadron was now again behind me and in view of their apparent lack of application so far this mission, I resolved to show them how it was done. After a short chase, I rolled in behind the Mitchell and blasted him, with spectacular results. I broke up and away, leaving the bomber diving to its destruction in the sea below. Perhaps he'd already been damaged by my comrades but I saw no evidence of it. In fact as far as I was concerned, all three victories were mine, and mine alone. At best I could possibly thank my squadron for dividing the enemy return fire, such as there was of it. Anyway, the skies were clear and it was back to base. Clearly I'd survived, and we'd taken no losses as a squadron, while knocking down three bombers. This seemed a pretty good return for a day's work. I doubted it would be so easy, next time, and resolved to make better use of my team in future. In CFS2 you can do this - within the limitations of the AI's abilities - by selecting each target in turn then issuing an 'attack' command, so as to send off a pair of wingmen after each one. With eight of us on the mission, I could and should have done this before piling in myself. But three kills and a lesson or two learned can't be all bad, I told myself as I came in to land back at Kitanodai. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this mission from Yoshi's 'The Battle of Chishima'; as much as I recall doing first time around, many moons ago. To my mind, CFS2's still a pretty good air combat sim, a good choice for anyone wanting to make a start in the genre and a great platform for a Pacific air war fix for old and new players alike. It's not the only one though. By way of comparison, the next report will feature the Ki-43 Hayabusa again, this time in IL-2 '46.